Stretch Goals Revealed!

Thank you everyone for all of your wonderful comments! Hearing everyone's stories and seeing everyone's reactions is what this all about. Shenmue means so much to so many people and we hope everyone keeps spreading the love.

There is lots of Shenmue 3 Kickstarter left and a long way to go to.
So, let’s start revealing those Stretch Goals!

There are plenty more where that came from and new ones will be revealed as we keep climbing.
The next Stretch Goals on the list will add new systems to Shenmue 3 that will give a huge boost to the gameplay. The Rapport System will add a depth of story, interactivity and character development that only Yu Suzuki can bring. The Skill Tree System will give Ryo a new way to level up and specialize his fighting move set.

Next up is the Baisha Village expansion goals—spend more time exploring Baisha, with extra mini-games, interactive events and a new character system. The Character Perspective System will really let you explore the world of Shenmue through the different character personalities.

Messages and Comments and FAQs

Thank you everyone for all of your comments, questions and ideas. If you have a question, please send us a message. There has been just a flood of them and we are very sorry, but it may take a little while before we can get back. We are working as hard as we can, and all of your messages will be answered.

We are updating the FAQs regularly, so you may find your question has been answered there.

Comments

Just wanted to let you know how thrilled i am that this game is finally happening. I ordered Shenmue 2 from Japan when i heard i wouldn't be able to buy it in the states on dreamcast. It came with a utopia bootdisc. Never forget it.

@Thomas: "There needs to be rewards for those who pledge above $500 but below $10k, just to give better incentives for people to do it! otherwise your are in for a long climb to those stretch goals!" I agree with you. I also mentioned this earlier. We need more high-end rewards, but we also need more backers. Everybody contact 2-3 gamer friends to each pledge $29 - if each of us gets 2-3 NEW PEOPLE to contribute just $29 we can get above 100k backers. Twitter hashtag: #3friendsforshenmue3 e.g. https://twitter.com/asado_ar/status/611551934172954624

@Scherge - I think you are right with the tier rewards - the whole campaign stinks of being amateur! Looking at the stretch goals we need a whole $Mil just for the extras on Baisha Village... considering the video suggests that there is at least 2 more villages to add we need a potential $3,000,000 - with the highest Pledge remaining being 500 - this means we would need the backing of what 6000 more people at 500 to break this?

Lets look at Bloodstained - that got 64000 backers - about 24,000 more than we currently have to make $3,000,000 those people would all have to pledge at least $125 themselves and given there is no physical ps4 copy, its something they are reluctant to do -

There needs to be rewards for those who pledge above $500 but below $10,, just to give better incentives for people to do it! otherwise your are in for a long climb to those stretch goals!

@Samuel
I think the problem lies with the pledge tiers rather than with the stretch goals. For me, a physical console release is the gateway to a higher pledge. I could see myself going as high as the 175 level, but not without a PS4 retail game. Therefore, I'm (currently) stuck at the 29 dollars level. Many others have demanded tiers in the 1,000 to 5,000 dollar region, so I guess there's room for growth, too.

The stretch goals detract more than they help, in my opinion, because they seem to contain in-game stuff (read: things that are closely related to the actual game and should be included anyway) rather than additional stuff. Online leaderboards, orchestral soundtrack, support for VR devices, bonus combat arenas, licensed arcade emulations etc. are nice to have, but not essential to the game. Hm. Maybe I'm not making myself clear enough, but it's hard to put my finger on it.

Anyway: The fear that we might not hit some goals which are actually relevant to the core game and story seems to hold back many people at this point. Which would be a non-issue if the campaign organizers had just said: "Yeah, we've got assured funding for the game itself, but we'll be using the Kickstarter money to bring you these cool extras."

Hopefully the stretch goals will be explained in a video, because those explanations are equally vague.
The team should make a let's play of Shenmue with some people, they should put the stretch goals higher in the webpage.
If you can't give a ps4 physical copy, at least there should be more tiers between 500 and 10000 (mirrors replicas should be great).

Sadly with the scretch goals, I got less and less excited for this title, knowing it'll only be a few more years. The kickstart process looks more to greed, compared building a game that wants to be built. I would honestly love to see more from Shenmue 1 and 2, a contract with Sega to bring them forward, HD remasters, or just a coding to let them run on the Ps4/3 + Pc.

I still can't wait for the game to come out, but I won't have my hypes set to high just incase.

I think you should move the Stretch Goals image to the top and explain what they actually are. Also, something physical would go a long way. I noticed pledges aren't coming in as quickly as they were in the beginning, and it's because the stretch goals aren't that enticing.

@Petar. I don't know more than you :) I just compared the budgets of current open-world games to show what's realistic with a rather "small" budget (small is relative of course, but Witcher3's budget is small compared to GTA V). I hope Shenmue 3 can also get to $12-15 million in total (Sony + Kickstarter).

Dear Mr Suzuki, Almighty Legendary Sensei,
I went to trouble of buying a prepaid creditcard in order to fund this project.
I now plan to impragnate my wife and name our first born after you.
I also convinced her to buy a brand new SUZUKI Alto, simply because your name is in it.
Thank you. Thank you for giving us an end to a truly inspiriational story.
Regards,

(If anyone from the future reads this, please contact me, i'll reward you with my body for a copy of shenmue3)

@Marc, do you think Shenmue III will be 200+ hrs long /as the Witcher III/? Did you hear even something about the length of Shenmue III? If it's 200+ /non-boring/ hrs I'll up my pledge by $500 at once! I'll even give up the desire for a physical release on PS4!!!

I ask all backers reading to sign up 2-3 gamer friends at the $29 level. What is $29? Two movie tickets plus popcorn or a few overpriced lattes at Starbucks. With the same amount you can fund a true gem of a game after almost 15 years of waiting. If we ALL get 2-3 friends to join in, we can easily surpass 100k backers. #3friendsforshenmue3 - Let's do this! I will continue to post this every day until the end of the campaign.

@Petar, @Adrian: The development costs are still huge, even with modern game engines. Here's the Wikipedia list how much modern, vast open-world games cost to develop ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop ) - just look at the development cost column. It can be done with less by clever teams. One recent example is Witcher3 (total budget: $40 million ($12-15 million development, $25 million marketing). That's why we need to keep pushing for a great game. If the campaign can get to $5-8 million, then maybe Sony can fund the rest to equal the development budget of Witcher3. That game currently has a Metacritic score of 94 and a user score of 9.2 - so a great game can be done. But the current amount is not enough. Some people seem to underestimate how much money a game needs. Let's keep pushing and at least reach 5-8 million on Kickstarter!
PS: It also posted this in the general comment section, but since there are over 4000 comments there, I copied it here.

@Adrian Tullock, It's true, that the original Shenmue did cost $47-70mil and every DreamCast owner had to buy the game twice or even triple for any profit from the game, but back in 1999 everyone /every game developing studio/ got to write their own engine and this did the difference!
With today's tools, Unreal engine licensing, etc. it's far, far easier and also very /very/ cheap to make games with 95% less people in the studio!
Yes, it's possible to make a game like Shenmue with funds of about $2-3mil, without any problems!
IMO the real problem with the game is the very compact community /at the end of campaign I don't believe, that there will be more than 60-80k backers/ and Sony wants to see massess arise - to sell at least 2mil copies to 2mil (!!!) players for an A game, 4 for AA and 8+ for AAA-title!
The best example is the big flop Dreamfall: Chapters - 21858 backers and when released, of which only 1329 actually played it and under 600 bought from STEAM! Should I open word for the failure two-episode "Broken Age"?!
My point is, that such games are made completely for the die-hard fans and as such WE DESERVE proper stretch goals! We don't need commercial product to fund in places like KS and to expect stretch goals 5 for one town, 10 for the next, 20 for the orc. soundtrack, 30 for expanded gameplay, etc.!
KS is for the fans and Mr. Yu-san, please erase at once the... meh... stretch goals and replace them with relevant onces immediately if you want more fans and the project not to go to a halt with only 1-6k per day /Yooka-Laylee, anyone/!

P.S. If you have to, break the agreement /if there's one/ with Sony, and add reward tier for physical PS4 release, because IT'LL BE FOR THE FANS!

Some people have no concept of how much it costs in time and resources to develop a quality game. The original was on a single platform (Sega Dreamcast) and the budget for the game back then was well over $40 mil. Sony is backing this project with resources, and people want an extra million dollar stretch goal to be development on an entirely different platform by the end of 2017? Then, lets just surmise that Sony is a company that actually wants return on its investment (being a business and all) and could stand to benefit from sales of a game they are supporting, where as for the last decade, Sega did not.

Leave it to "fans" to whine about what they want when initially they were getting nothing.

On a more up beat note, I'm lookin forward to the end product! Hope Sega sees value in bring HD ports of the previous two forward after this!

Hi! Those stretch goals are... meh :(
I wrote them and asked why are there such... stretch goals, but nobody answered :(
I can give example with Bloodstained - every single stretch goal was great fun and enormous motivation for new backers, but now we're down to $30-40k per day and asking ourselves are those SG worth at all :(
Like Bloodstained we want to see an expanded world, multiple console systems /incl. handhelds/, etc., etc.
Frankly, those revealed SG fell down on me as a very cold shower...
Good luck, anyway.
P.S. I still want the PS4 physical copy and still will up my pledge accordingly.

I don't think these stretch goals are necessarily true. Most the money is coming from elsewhere. Yu Suzuki will hopefully be able to make the game he wants irrespective of a few hundred thousand extra from Kickstarter. They're just there because it's the done thing. Don't worry about them, just donate. In Yu Suzuki we trust.

@jetstrange my friend i wouldn't mind it an HD ofcourse, but they already answer, we need to redirect our voices to Sega .

Hope this ShenmueIII team is aware that need to do is job and just don't wait to hardcore fans to put all this money. We have done too much this 14 years . Now its a matter of marketing and campaign, do your part YSNET & co-producers.

Idea: again i must say the subtitles are dispensable , i prefer content than multi lang . In this case i'm disappointed, but so happy to at least know this game is already funded. Shenmue <3

@Scherge. I'm sure they don't hide stretch goals on purpose. Have you seen how much a vast modern vdeo game costs? If often above $10-20 million. Some portions of the donations will be used for KS (thier cut), licensing the Unreal Engine and producing the goods for backers. This game needs millions more to complete the full scenario. What all of us can do to help: CONTACT 2-3 FRIENDS and tell them about this campaign. We need 100k backers! We only have 40k at the moment. Take a momnet to post a message on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc. Make 2–3 people sign up for at least the $29 tier.

Please don't hold parts of the game hostage behind stretch goals! I can't speak for everyone else, but personally, I'd be much more likely to increase my pledge for something I truly want (console disc release, collector's items) than for fear of not getting the "full" game. I mean, if these parts of the game are relevant to the story, they shouldn't be left out either way. And if they are not... why include them as important stretch goals?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not worried about development itself. If the rumors are true and Sony's indeed funding the project, it will be a big game when it comes out eventually, and I'm trusting all the veterans involved to deliver a great experience. However, the sharp drop-off in pledges after the first day as well as the comments below seem to indicate that fans are backing "Shenmue III" DESPITE the way this campaign is handled, not BECAUSE of it, and that makes me sad...

@Khanh Vu Your right ..... But when it comes to "Stretch Goals ... It wouldn't be a bad idea tho now as for remakeing sure your right but how about a import n such.

@Dexter okay your absolutely right, but! im talking Stretch goals. im like saying around for 9k they will ask Sega if they can import 1 & 2 and yes they should Focus on Shenmue 3. DOUBLE IDEA! they could ask the people who made YAKUZA to do it that my friend would be awesome....

Can't believe people are actually asking for a remake of 1 & 2 when all of that money should instead be used to create a much better Shenmue 3. Shenmue 1/2 already plays and looks great on Dreamcast, we don't need a remake!

On topic, I hope you guys add a physical copy for PS4 as a pledge reward.

STOP asking about Shenmue HD, they don't have control of it! This is Shenmue III focus on that ... And again kickstart managers, your goals are way to high, better start searching for funds to include your "plenty more features" .. and by the way, subtitles can't cost 100.000$ i would do it for free to see my language included ... Sort your parameters out!

I'm also not very happy about the way the stretch goals are handled. In the video you talk about two other cities/villages but now we are up to 5 million dollars with stretch goals and it' still about the first vilage? You are extremely optimistic here, it's rather unlikely that the amount of money will grow as fast as it has the last two day, campaigns always slow down extremely after a while.

These stretch goals are terrible!!! What the hell is this village and why should we care? If you are already expanding upon it why does it take 500 grand to add some more little stuff. C'mon we already know ur being funded by 3rd party publishers as well as kickstarter. You can do better than this!

Could you please elaborate on the "Character Perspective System"?
Is it different personalities for Ryo or different characters?
And why is it linked to Baisha village? Sounds more like a global feature to me?